


New Life for the Grave-Singer

by SadMageCentral



Series: Finding You Can Change [3]
Category: Elder Scrolls Online
Genre: Awkward Crush, Cameos, Enemies to Friends, F/M, Festivals, Friendship, Hurt/Comfort, Original Character(s), Self-Esteem Issues, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-14
Updated: 2019-03-14
Packaged: 2019-11-17 23:57:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,411
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18109133
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SadMageCentral/pseuds/SadMageCentral
Summary: Durgakh the Orcish Vestige drags her friend (and perhaps, some day, more than that) Angof, recently transformed back into a human, to the New Life Festival.





	New Life for the Grave-Singer

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SkyScribbles](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SkyScribbles/gifts), [Mutantenfisch](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mutantenfisch/gifts).



> This work has a lot of cameos by many OCs belonging to the lovely people I have played ESO with at various times; unfortunately, I know the AO3 handles of only two of them. The full list of credits is on the story's DeviantArt page. In general, even if you are not familiar with the characters described, I hope that their diverse appearance and quirks will still serve to portray the hectic but excited atmosphere that permeates the New Life Festival.

The carved stone pedestal of the wayshrine - part of a sprawling magical network for instant teleportation, useful to have on a continent as vast as Tamriel - flared up with a vibrant blue flame, which shot up towards the ornate little wooden roof the local Nords had built over it on four thick pillars, to protect it from the cold weather, and spat out bright azure embers.  
  
These tiny star-like dots circled through the nippy air, faster and faster, with wisps of blue light trailing after them like threads after needle points. And out of the threads, with a lot of sparkling and hissing, outlines of two figures gradually wove themselves: hazy dark silhouettes at first, then blobs of intermeshed colours, like hastily sketched portraits - and finally, clear and unmistakable. Two travellers returning from another end of the fractured former Empire, their boots still caked over with the golden sand of the vast desert to the southwest, where the proud Redguards built their ornate golden-domed towerlets, shaping stone with such intricacy as if it were lace.  
  
The sudden change of climate, between the sweltering heat of the Redguards' native Alik'r, and the transparent, frost-touched air of Skyrim, made these two new arrivals - a lanky round-faced Orcish woman and her male human companion with a shaved head - stagger a little on the spot, gasping loudly and shivering as the chilly breeze crawled under their clothing and powdered their noses, eyes, and shoulders with smatterings of sharp snow crystals.  
  
The human - a rather pale fellow in a mage's robe, who had a curious scar running across the bridge of his nose and both his cheeks, like some triangular object was slapped against his face and left an imprint - seemed both more affected by the abrupt shift from desert to snow than the Orc, and more excited about it. That much was made evident by the way he widened his eyes, as vividly blue as a glowing Welkynd stone from an ancient elven ruin, and surrounded by dark bruised circles that made his gaze even more stark and, well, glimmering, by sheer contrast.  
  
He smiled, too, as he inhaled deeply, prolonging his drink of fresh air as much as he could, and stretching his lips more and more, as if just for the sake of checking how far he could go (which, frankly, made his expression somewhat frightening to look at); eventually, when his facial muscles could not take it any longer, he relaxed them with a small soft laugh.  
  
All the while, the Orc had been eyeing him curiously from under the hood rim of her fur-adorned cape, which she had pulled out of her backpack and put on for better protection against the encroaching cold. The dainty little bit of clothing was sewn out of the finest Colovian fabric, blue with silvery embroidery to match her dress... not the most typical attire for a rugged, green-skinned, long-tusked child of Malacath; even less typical was her slender built, and the sheer gentleness with which she watched her companion stick out his tongue to try and taste a snowflake.  
  
'You are really enjoying this, aren't you?' she asked, tiny dimples appearing on her green cheeks. 'Travelling around Tamriel, doing good deeds, experiencing different people's festival traditions? Even when...'  
  
She chortled quietly into her fuzzy mitten.  
  
'Even when these traditions involve joining a race along a desert city walls, to light the ritual fires before the sandglass turns?'  
  
'Oh, I loved that!' the man exclaimed enthusiastically, his voice thick with an accent that indicated that he had learned the common tongue of the Empire only late in life.  
  
'Running under the glaring sun, sweat running down my spine, that bloody prickle at the back of my throat - and then, second wind! Oh, I have forgotten so much about having a regular, healthy, curse-free body!'  
  
He got so carried away by describing his sensations that he almost misstepped off the wayshrine's platform and tripped over his own feet - but the Orc caught him under the elbow and steered him safely onto a hardened, rimy dirt path across a stretch of plains peppered with snowdrifts and patches of dry yellow grass.  
  
For a brief moment, he seemed aghast, staring glassily at the place where their limbs brushed against one another, almost like he expected some damaging, physical response from his own body; something that would cause him to harm the Orc at the slightest contact. Perhaps, that would have been the case when he had still been under that curse he'd mentioned - and sometimes, he simply forgot the curse was gone.   
  
But, as nothing happened, and the Orc remained by his side, hale and hearty and smiling at him, the robed man soon calmed down, and took another breath of air, savouring it like fine wine.  
  
As his face lightened up, the Orc (who had grown tense and anxious over him reliving his old curse) relaxed as well. And when her companion sighed in contentment, relishing the aftertaste of his refreshing air draught, her silvery-grey eyes filled with a liquid shine, and her voice even quivered a little when she decided to add in a small lighthearted remark,  
  
'And now you are known as the Signal Fire Zephyr!'.  
  
'Always better than the... the... than my former name,' the man replied, trying and failing to echo her carefree tone and trailing off into stifled silence.  
  
The Orc arched her thin black eyebrows piteously and let go of him, lest her touch unsettle him again.  
  
'Let's go see what gift the Herald will reward us with for following another holiday custom,' she declared firmly, steering the subject back to festive cheer and beckoning the robed man to walk down the path after her.   
  
'Maybe it will be another extract from a book on how to make Skin-Changer armour! The lore of your fellow Reachmen! You love collecting those pages!'  
  
The man agreed, his tentative smile dispersing the shadow of pain that had clouded his face.   
  
And off they sailed.  
  
For, a few paces further along the path, the plains turned into a veritable sea of striking clothing and armour colours, and thrashing, frantically shoving limbs - human-pink and Altmeri-gold and Dunmeri-grey, and also occasionally covered in scales or fur - with a tumult of shrill voices and clamouring metal ringing over it like the cries of seagulls over the heaving waves.   
  
Adventurers of all stripes and creeds had hurried here from across the continent, to honour the diverse traditions of Tamriel's main winter celebration - the New Life Festival. From catching fish for the hungry impoverished lizardfolk in the verdant green marshes of Argonia, to making a pilgrimage through the wild Valenwood jungle, home of the Bosmeri tribes, or dancing on red-hot coals to make a reserved smile of approval appear on the ashen, angular faces of the Dunmer.  
  
For each noble mission to share the spirit of the festival with the Empire's many races, the adventurers were to receive a reward from the Herald, a jovial Nord woman named Breda, who awaited them at an open-air feast table in the middle of the plains - which was where the silver-eyed Orc and the scarred human were now trying to plough their way, time and time again nearly knocked to the ground by all the celebrants who were trying to do the same.  
  
In the frothing ocean of the crowd, many scenes unfolded all at once, some comical - and some downright alarming.  
  
Somewhere to the left of the path, an enormous, thick-coated four-legged feline was making insistent purring noises at the rather skittish, rake-thin Altmer that hid themself behind a curtain of impossibly long black hair (which trailed across the snowy ground behind them too). Standing next to the big cat, was a more familiar, two-legged Khajiit, who was explaining patiently, referring to herself in third person, as most catfolk do,  
  
'Do not be alarmed, walker! This is Khashani's father: we were born under different moons, thus Khashani can speak like the furless ones, but he cannot. He is saying that he is sorry he stepped on your hair'.  
  
There was another big cat standing a little way behind Khashani and her father - the mother of the family, perhaps? - with jewels dangling off her neck and ears and adorning her front paws. Her tail bobbed up and down anxiously as she listened to her kin's apologies - and its moving tip somehow appeared edible to a chubby pet pig, which followed its pendulum sway with voracious interest in its beady eyes, while an agitated Bosmer, with a garland of tiny magical lights stretching between his deer-like antler, was trying to drag it away, telling it sternly,  
  
'No, Slopsy! Bad pig! Bad pig!'  
  
In the meantime, to the left, another Bosmer, wearing a round leather helmet and goggles, was racing towards the feast table aboard a gigantic Dwarven-style construct resembling a brass spider, with clicking, rotating joints and steam gushing from under its square-patterned thorax. And during that race, came dangerously close to running over a second Altmer.  
  
This latter elf, who had a bit of a... healthier built than his cat-surrounded compatriot, wore his reddish-brown hair cropped short in a typical Imperial style; he seemed to have gotten distracted from maneuvering in the crowd by the sight of a brightly coloured bug (one of the few that still kept skittering over Skyrim's plains in this cold season). Flapping his butterfly net and grinning to himself in boyish delight, he never noticed the approach of the metal spider - and the tiny leaf-eared driver would never have ground his machine to a halt in time, as the steam had clouded his goggles. The only thing that saved the clueless elven natural scientist, right in the nick of time, was the sharp alarmed cry of a long-tailed imga-kin monkey, fuzzy and reddish-gold like a bright peach, which perched itself on the shoulder of yet another, and once again, entirely different Altmer, who sported a long braid of silken hair and was wearing the baggy, loose-flowing clothes of a seafarer.  
  
He had been dodging the charging adventurers with an overflowing mug of festival grog carefully balanced in his grip. But when his monkey began shrieking and waving its little leathery hands in agitation, he spotted the automaton looming over his kinsman, and instantly tossed aside his bubbling prize - which was deftly caught by a pair of Argonian lizardfolk, one whiter than the trampled snowbanks behind him, the other mottled blue, with gnarled old scars across the snout and an impressive cluster of webbed plumes at the back of the head (this latter Argonian seemed very appreciative of this lucky catch, and grinned broadly as the grog sloshed over her clawed fingers, a long wet tongue darting thirstily between her parted toothy jaws).   
  
With his hands thus freed, the sailor elf leapt in the wind-up spider's path, yanking the disoriented bug lover to safety before the automaton rattled on along its way, the pilot shifting around in his seat and lifting up his goggles to look behind, with a flash of relief in his squinting eyes.  
  
And straight ahead, too, there were quite a few curious things happening - like an animated conversation between two new Bosmer: a man, who was drowning in his own luxuriant beard, with just his glinting dark eyes and cheeky smirk visible; and a petite, pretty woman, who appeared to be in the middle of a fantastical tale of how she had been chased around by a horde of screaming, bug-eyed guards, because she had accidentally hit one of them while vigorously training with her dual blades. Unfortunately, she had just reached a cliffhanger (which may or may not have involved her quite literally dangling off a cliff, while the guards crowded around, weapons a-blazing), when she was interrupted.  
  
A freckled Breton woman, barefoot despite the weather, rushed by, in a whirl of many-layered garments, all coloured various shades of green, with her ginger hair bouncing on either side of her face in large, windswept locks (incidentally, according to some barbers of Tamriel, her hair style was actually named 'By Kyne, it's windy!'). Cutting into the two little elves' exchange, she asked them anxiously,  
  
'Have you by any chance spotted a storm atronach wandering by? You know, a summoned creature, made out of floating rock bits, with lightning threads in between? I entrusted it with delivering a gift to a friend of mine, and now it's nowhere to be seen!'  
  
When both Bosmer responded to her question with a synchronous shake of the head, she let out a huge exasperated sigh, and trotted off, her shoeless soles flashing through the wilted grass.  
  
Truly, there was a lot to gawk at in this motley restless crowd - and who knows for how much more the Orc and her robed friend would have been absorbed by all the comings and goings of the adventurers around them... But they, too, had a distraction awaiting them.  
  
It came in the form of a child - a lizard girl in a slightly oversized fur coat, and at least half a dozen reindeer-patterned knitted scarves underneath its broad collar, green and blue and red and purple, making her rounded white snout peek out in the middle like the head of a colourful flower (no doubt, all of this had been wrapped around her by some overprotective adult trying to shield her cold-blooded little self from the bitter winds of Skyrim).  
  
'Hello, muth-th-th-thsera...' she peeped, tugging at the Orc's sleeve and drawing out the respectful term of address into a lisping hiss. 'I... I am a bit lost... And you seem nice... Could you help me find my mama and papa?'  
  
The child's intuition proved to be correct: the Orc did not have to be asked to twice to throw up her arms and begin clucking fretfully over the young Argonian (and now it was the scarred human's turn to grow misty-eyed at the sight of her trying so hard to be helpful).  
  
'Yes! Yes, of course!' she chattered, almost without pause. 'This place is a mess during the holidays, isn't it? So very easy for a little girl to be separated from her family! You are doing wonderfully, though - not crying, trying to find your way back! All right... I think I saw a couple of your kinsfolk over there somewhere... And one of them was even white-scaled like you! Were those your parents?'  
  
The girl shook her head.  
  
'No, my parents aren't Argonians! My papa is a Nord; he is big and strong, with the most amazing beard ever! And my mama is a lovely, lovely Dunmer!'  
  
'I see,' the Orc nodded genially. 'I once met a Khajiit whose brother was an Orc, and I am pen friends with an Altmer whose mama and papa are Imperials... So...'  
  
She tapped the bridge of her snub green nose, plunging into thought.  
  
'How about... Instead of sifting through the crowd where you can get knocked back and stomped over, you stick with us and we take you to Breda the Herald? She can make an announcement that you are looking for your parents!'  
  
'All right,' the girl agreed - and extended her hand trustingly.   
  
The Orc beamed at her and firmly grasped her tiny scaly fingers, the tips of which poked from under the rim of her heavy fur-padded sleeve. After that, she gave her companion a meaningful look, as if urging him silently to take the child's other hand; and he did give his forearm a vague, twitch-like motion in the general direction of the little Argonian, while his fingers curled and uncurled again... But ultimately, he jerked his hand away from her, and the grimace that warped his scarred features - one very similar to his look when the Orc had grabbed his arm - seemed to indicate that he was still kept having misgivings about touching another living being, especially one as vulnerable as a child; as though he were still cursed, and contact with him could endanger her somehow. Wound her. Infect her.    
  
The Orc's face fell, but she did not keep forcing him to hold the girl's hand. With one long, sympathetic look at her companion, she began to walk with the bundled-up Argonian towards the feast table, while the robed man followed her in silence, scratching mechanically at something through his sleeve.  
  
They did not even have to approach Breda for help themselves. When they came into close view of the table - which creaked and sagged under the weight of platefuls of steaming, sugary-crusted meat, and inhumanly sized pots of thick, filling porridge with berries scattered on top, and deep bowls of creamy fish soup, and fat mead kegs the size of a (very well-fed) grown man's torso - they spotted a brawny, balding Nord man with a sizeable beard, flaming-red and knotted into braids that bore cute little pink bows of a kind that a little girl would make so that her papa might look festive. The man was talking to Breda the Herald in a very animated way, clenching his fists and mentioning, over and over again, something about crushing skulls.  
  
'Looks like a worried papa Nord to me,' the Orc murmured to herself - and then, raised her voice to call out, with an enthusiastic wave of her mittened hand,  
  
'Hello there! Your daughter is safe and sound! No need for any skull-crushing!'   
  
The Nord swivelled his head - and in but a fraction of a second, his expression changed from a mix of restlessness and anger to a real sunburst of gleeful recognition.  
  
'You've got her? You've got my Basks-In-Love?' he boomed, elbowing his way closer to the Orc. 'And oh... I know you! You are Durgakh! That lass my friends and I go monster-slayin' with sometimes! The one who sidestepped off a cliff in Craglorn once and landed right into the arms of a wild storm atronach!'  
  
The Orc let go of the girl - who, at this point, found it more than easy to eel among the last few revellers that separated her from her father, and then toss herself at him, hugging his knees, while a Dunmer woman (the lovely mama, of course!) appeared from behind the Nord's broad back and gently stroked the top of the little Argonian's scaly head.   
  
The child's temporary chaperone, in the meanwhile, used her freed-up hands to pull her fuzzy hood closer round her face, which had turned from green to red like some sort of magical fast-ripening tomato.  
  
'I, um...' she squeaked in nervous embarrassment (which seemed to somewhat upset her companion, who had been watching her closely throughout the entire conversation, his brows coming down so low in an intent frown that they almost blocked out his blue eyes).  
  
'I thought I'd step aside...' she went on, reassuring her scarred friend with a wave-like gesture and a fleeting smile, 'And... Let you talk with your comrades undisturbed...'  
  
'Nonsense!' the Nord scoffed, now completely mellowed, as he reached past some adventurer or other and pulled the Orc closer to the feast table.  
  
'You will never disturb me, lass! Come! Join our merry company!'  
  
As it turned out, the big bearded fellow had assembled quite a gathering around himself. Sitting close by him, at smaller tables adjoining the main site of the lavish feast, was the already familiar Dunmeri mama, who was now busy rearranging the scarves on Basks-In-Love the Argonian, who had nestled side by side with her, and scolding her, not unkindly, for running off out of sight; and also, the mama's surly, one-eyed, heavily scarred kinsman with no hair on his head save for a dark fringe he had left unshaved and tied into a small ponytail (he had made himself comfortable with his legs stretched forward and crossed slightly, and was leisurely sharpening a small knife before he could tuck into the roasted leg of some manner of gigantic bug); then, another Dunmeri woman, dimpled and giggling, who had to be the one-eyed fellow's relative or lover, for she was the only person present that he did not look at like she had just made a crude finger-painting out of the ashes of his ancestors; and finally, a lanky, long-haired Altmer in the gilded black armour of a Thalmor, shyly trying to be a gentle-elf and offering frilly little snacks on sticks to a very pale Breton woman, who was fanning herself elegantly with one hand and stroking the sleek copper coat of the pet fox in her lap in the other, and insisting patiently that now, she was not hungry... not right now.  
  
Most of them recalled Durgakh the Orc  when the Nord introduced her to them - from their past encounters in those absolutely delightful places where adventurers would usually meet, such as flame-engulfed treetop villages, or maze-like underground prisons meant to contain a single powerful lich, or cobwebbed dens of spider-like monsters with an ability to warp human minds - and inclined their heads politely in greeting. The Altmer even got up and kissed her hand, his long blonde mane (topped with a light net of braids that had tiny pearls woven into them) flapping down and obscuring his face.  
  
What it did not obscure, however, was the figure of the robed man, who had backtracked unobtrusively, just like Durgakh had done in that little tale of hers, to let old acquaintances get reunited.  
  
'My, b-but you... You have forgotten to introduce your friend!' he said softly, straightening up his wiry frame and offering the robed stranger a tentative handshake.  
  
'Oh, yes, of course!' the Orc chimed after him with a bright smile. 'This is...'  
  
'Nobody,' the robed man cut her off briskly, scratching at his arm again. 'I am nobody'.  
  
The Breton stirred in her seat, while her fox pricked up its ears.  
  
'Your accent sounds familiar,' she mused. 'Are you... A man of the Reach?'  
  
'And that mark on your face...' the one-eyed Dunmer added, laying down his knife and rubbing his chin. 'That shape... I swear I have seen it before... Like... A mask?'  
  
The stranger's breaths grew shallow and hoarse, while his fingers dug into his forearm with a kind of hungry ferocity. Scratching through the cloth of his robe was no longer enough, so he rolled up his sleeve in an instinctive yanking motion, revealing that there were more scars crawling all over his skin, tracing the contours of what looked like...   
  
Vines.   
  
Thick, thorny vines.  
  
Quite recognizable in the eyes of anyone who - like, evidently, the pale Breton and the one-eyed elf - had ever been to Glenumbra: the marshy woodland region on the west shores of Tamriel where the Bretons settled, home of the grand merchant city of Daggerfall, the vast legendary cemetery of Cath Bedraud, and the untamed fens that sheltered Reachman tribes, hag covens, werewolf packs, and gods alone knew what else.  
  
It was from those fens that, in the most recent memory, a dark curse had spread like a plague. Monstrous thorny stalks bursting out of the ground and suffocating all other life around them. Poisoning the air and the water. Growing through dead bodies - and sometimes through the flesh of those who still lived - turning each bloated, staggering victim into a mindless abomination, with sickly green vines writhing in their chests and stomachs and mouths and eye sockets like a nest of snakes.  
  
By now, most of these nightmarish plants had been destroyed by brave adventurers, including Durgakh the Orc, and the woodlands had been restored to their original state by some mysterious healer, but the memory of poison still lingered. Just as the memory of the one that had first planted the vines in the soil of Glenumbra, in the service of the dark Daedric Lord Molag Bal. The one that, according to the few people who had seen him and lived, had also been cursed, having to endure the same vines ripping through his  body, and also to wear a mask because of his supposedly unbearable deformity. The one that the terrified whispers would refer to as...  
  
'Angof the Grave-Singer,' the Breton said, each of the three words weighted as if with lead, an odd reddish spark dancing in her eyes as she scanned the man's scars.  
  
Jolting with the realization of what he had revealed, he hastily pulled his sleeve back.  
  
But it was already too late.   
  
A heavy silence had fallen over the little tables, barely broken even by the ceaseless rumble of the crowd; the entire gathering bored their glares into him; whereas Durgakh clapped her hand against her mouth, her face blotchy and swollen and her eyes dim with tears... But not because she was shocked to learn her companion's identity; she had to have known it beforehand, melt into a happy green puddle as she did whenever he revelled in not being cursed any longer. No, she appeared to be... Heartbroken over his own pain.  
  
For there  _was_  pain in his voice, splitting through it like a deep crack, when he lashed back at the Breton, his eyes an ice storm.  
  
'Yes, that is my name! I liked to think of it as "former name"... But I will never be rid of it, will I? I may have freed myself from Molag Bal; I may have gotten back the soul he stole from me; I may have cleansed my body of those damn vines... But that name will always be part of me... Like...'  
  
He glanced searchingly at Durgakh, and it was only after their gazes met that he brought himself to continue.  
  
'Like my scars... and my nightmares of Coldharbour... and my fear of touching people... I will always be a monster in my own heart... And in your eyes, I suppose...'  
  
He finished by swallowing a huge lump in his throat and passing his hand over his eyes, so overwhelmed that he did not even flinch away when Durgakh cautiously tapped her hand just below his shoulder, wanting to comfort him but not wishing to set off his fears.  
  
The one-eyed Dunmer arched his only eyebrow, and remarked thoughtfully,  
  
'In my experience with monsters, they are not usually aware of who they are'.  
  
'Aye,' the Nord agreed. 'Monsters do not regret being monstrous; that is not their way'.  
  
'You did all those horrible things because you had been tricked by Molag Bal,' Durgakh whispered soothingly, her hand still hovering some half an inch away from Angof's forearm.  
  
'You wanted to use your powers for good... But Daedric magic got the better of you... And now look at you: you are travelling the world with me - and not only just for the festival, either! You are discovering new lands, helping people! It's good that you remember your past, because it helps you atone - but... But you can't forget about your present!'  
  
'Angof the Grave-Singer, released from his curse...' the Breton pondered, utterly unfazed by the Reachman's outburst, and even mildly amused. 'Not something that I could have foreseen, but... Good for you, I suppose. So long as you clean up your own mess in Glenumbra'.  
  
'I have been trying,' Angof admitted, still hoarse. 'Visiting the families that lost someone because of me... Healing the forest... Those witches who mind the trees - the Wyrd Sisters - they almost set me on fire when they saw me again, but...'  
  
'But they accepted you in the end,' Durgakh reminded him - and as, for once, her touch did not unsettle him, she managed to lean against him in a half-embrace, which made two faint pink spots appear on Angof's cheeks.  
  
'As you should accept yourself'.  
  
'This festival is just for you, then,' the Altmer said, finally getting his handshake. 'New life. New beginnings'.  
  
'We all have a bit of light and dark in us,' the Nord's Dunmeri love summed up, as she snuggled with her Argonian daughter. 'And now is the time to remember the light'.  
  
At that point, the Nord must have deemed the atmosphere too high-strung for his liking, and declared boisterously, resting his hands on his hips,  
  
'Speaking of the festival, do any of you know that one of my people's finest winter traditions is diving off a cliff into icy water? In naught but our smallclothes?'  
  
It soon became obvious that he had meant this not as sharing a fun fact, but as extending an invitation: for he began nudging everyone at the little tables to get up, with an impatient, 'Come on! Come on! That yon river isn't gonna jump into itself!'.  
  
And as his Dunmer companions warned the others that 'You'd better do as he says, or he'll lock you in a bear hug and carry you off anyway', the New Life revellers complied, and filed off after the cheerfully marching big fellow, into the white-capped hills to the north, where the layer of snow grew thicker, harder, sparklier, until it got chopped through like a gigantic lump of sugar by the steely glinting knife of an unfreezing stream, which was crossed by a wooden bridge, with huge icicles latched onto its underside almost like extra support pillars.  
  
Once they reached the bridge's middle, all of the Nord's followers (except little Basks-In-Love the Argonian, who was told the dive was too dangerous for her) took up the cue given by him and began to disrobe and hurtle themselves over the edge, into the bitingly cold waves, where they landed with an inevitable hard, deafening splash and a shriek that came out high-pitched regardless of gender.  
  
After hitting their water, they began churning it into foamy slush, as they waded hurriedly towards the lower bank, where a bonfire had been lit, tall as a giant carrying his fattest mammoth on his shoulders, and where a group of ruddy-cheeked bathers, Nords mostly, was waiting to pull the newcomers out, wrap them into towels, and sit them down decisively onto a tree stump, thrusting a mug of mead into their hands.  
  
Durgakh and Angof were the last to take the plunge. Even Basks-In-Love had already had time to follow the long way down along the bank's slope (remembering to grab everyone's clothing, too, like the smart girl she was) and was now bouncing on her towel-clad father's knee and waving at the stragglers on the bridge from below.  
  
On and on, the Orc and the Reachman lingered, tiptoeing on the slippery frosted wood, with a wisp of fire magic dancing in the air between them - cast by Durgakh to keep them warm in case their hesitation stretched out too long.  
  
Each of the two would sometimes cast a furtive glance at the other's unclothed form: Angof was covered in more vine scars all the way to his toes, and a bit bony, as being an undead witchman did not really go hand in hand with gobbling down a lot of... conventional human food, which had to be rectified during the festival; Durgakh, in turn, was what some scornful hearthwife from her kin's stronghold would call 'flat and puny like an elf', with a magicka burn mark across her left collarbone. And each time they caught a glimpse of bared flesh, green or pink, they would bite into their lips and try to stifle an awkward squawk, a whole thick veil of scarlet falling over their faces and trailing right down to their chests - as if they were not a grown man and woman, the terror of Breton lands and an experienced dungeon delver with many battles under her belt, but a couple of silly teenagers discovering the mysterious world of attraction for the first time (well, for Angof, that could actually be true, since his mortal body was relatively new, and he may not have yet figured out that it could do other things apart from running and breathing).  
  
At long last, the Orc flapped her arm wonkily from left to right, almost touching Angof's hand and then taking a swing back.  
  
'We can... Do it together,' she mouthed. 'A bit like... When we left Coldharbour'.  
  
'I would like that,' he confessed, weaving his fingers through hers and actually smiling when no vines broke through his skin to strangle her.  
  
Hand in hand, they edged closer to the drop - and made the decisive step, their hearts pounding on the blurry downward rush and the wind screeching in their ears. And as they clambered onto the shore, the Nord hollering something approving not far ahead, both of them thought that...  
  
It had been symbolic, in a way.  
  
A plunge into a new life.


End file.
